“Yes,” exclaimed Florence, springing to her feet, “and they may be law-abiding citizens! Come, you have given me the creeps. Besides, I’m starving. You get some bacon frying while I start the coffee brewing. We’ll eat. That will brighten our horizon.”
Nine o’clock came. Seated before a fire of brightly gleaming coals, their cozy bed of blankets and balsam boughs awaiting them, the two girls forgot the mysteries and adventures of the day to sit and talk, as young people will, of home, of friends, of hopes and fears, and of the future that stretches on and on before them like a golden pathway. They were deep in this whispered revery when, gripping her companion’s arm, Greta exclaimed, “There it is again!”
A wild, piercing, blood-curdling scream had rent the air of night.
“Wha—what can it be?” As if for protection, the slim girl threw herself into the arms of her stout companion.
“It’s no loon!” Florence measured her words. “It’s some human being in distress.”
“I told you!” The slim girl shuddered.
“We should go to their aid.”
“But just two girls! What could we do? We—”
“Listen!” Florence touched Greta’s lips. From afar, as on that other night, there came, wafted in faint and glorious tones, the whisper of a violin.
“I’ll tell you!” Greta sprang to her feet. “That man playing the violin has nothing to do with this other affair. He couldn’t possibly, or how could he play so divinely?”
“He couldn’t. He must be a friend of Percy O’Hara or he wouldn’t have had his picture. He is interested in others or he would not have lowered that rope to me. We must hunt him out and make him help us.”
“But how do you know it is a man? Why not a girl, or two girls like ourselves?” Greta doubted.
“It must be a man, just must be! Come!” Florence pulled her companion to her feet. “Come, we will follow the sound of the phantom violin.”
Florence led the way. It was strange, this following a sound into the night. More than once Greta found herself in the grip of an almost irresistible desire to turn back; yet always that cry of terror appeared to ring in her ears and she whispered: “We must!”
The trail they followed was one made by wild creatures. And night is their time for being abroad. Now as they pressed forward they caught the sound of some wolf or lynx sneaking away into the brush. Would they always flee? Greta shuddered as she asked the question.
From time to time they paused to listen for those silver notes of the phantom violin. “Growing louder,” Florence whispered on each occasion.
Once, after they had remained motionless for some time, she said with an air of certainty, “Comes from over the ridge.”
Soon after that they took a side trail and began to climb. This path was steep, all but straight up. More than once Greta caught her breath sharply as her foot slipped. The sturdy Florence struggled steadily upward until with a deep sigh she exclaimed, “There!”
She said no more. For a space of seconds the violin had been silent. Now, as the music burst once more upon their ears, it seemed all but upon them.
“A—a little farther.” The slender girl gripped Florence’s arm until it hurt.
Just then the moon went under a cloud.
“Look!” Greta whispered in an awed tone. “Look! What is that?”
What indeed? Before them, just how far away they could not tell, shone what appeared to be innumerable pairs of eyes.
“Green eyes,” Greta whispered.
Next moment her voice rose in a note of sheer terror.
“Florence! Florence! Where are you?”
No answer. Florence had vanished into the night.
CHAPTER XX
AID FROM THE UNKNOWN
As Greta called for the second time, “Florence! Florence! Where are you?” an answer came floating up to her.
“Here! Down below. I—I’m coming up.” There was a suggestion of suppressed pain in Florence’s voice. “Wait, you wait there.”
Greta had never found waiting easy. To wait now, with a hundred green eyes focussed upon her was all but impossible. And yet, what more was to be done? Florence, having fallen down the hillside in the dark, had taken the flashlight with her. And the darkness all about was intense. Without willing it, again and again she fixed her eyes on those small glowing orbs of green. “If I only knew!” she whispered, and again, “If I only did!”
She heard her companion’s panting breath as she struggled up the uncertain slope. “Must be half way up,” she whispered finally.
There came the sound of tumbling rocks. “She—she slipped!” Catching her breath, she waited. Yes, yes, she was climbing again.
And then as she was about to despair, a bulk loomed beside her, a strong arm encircled her.
“Greta,” a voice whispered, “I’ve sprained my ankle; not too badly. The flashlight is broken. We must try to find our way back.”
Two hours of groping and stumbling, with many a fall; two hours of fighting vines and brambles, then the dull glow of their burned out campfire greeted their tired eyes.
“Home!” Florence breathed. “Home!” And to this girl at that hour the humble six-foot-square tent, which they had set up that evening, was just that—nothing less.
It was Florence who could not sleep that night. The throbbing pain in the sprained ankle defied repose. The strange events of that day and those that had gone before had at last broken through her staunch reserve and entered her inner consciousness.
“Sleep!” she exclaimed at last in a hoarse whisper. “Who can sleep?”
* * * *
Strangely enough, at that moment in a little cabin at Chippewa Harbor, Vincent Stearns, the young newspaper photographer who had given Greta the white flares, lay on his cot looking away at the moon and wondering in a vague sort of way what was happening to his dark-eyed friend up there on Greenstone Ridge.
“Hope she finds some rare greenstones,” he said to the moon. “Hope she is finding adventure, happy adventure.
“Happy adventure.” He repeated the words softly. “Guess that’s what we all hope to have in life. But so few adventures are happy ones.
“And if that little girl’s adventures are not happy ones, there will come the white flare in the night.
“The white flare.” He found himself wishing against the will of his better self that he might catch the gleam of that white light against the skyline. “What an adventure!” he murmured. “Racing away to Lake Ritchie, paddling like mad, then struggling up the ridge in the night to find—”
Well, what would he find? What did he expect to find? He did not know. Yet something seemed to tell him that perhaps at some unearthly hour the flare would stand out against the sky.
* * * *
Adventure. Having given up thoughts of sleep, Florence was going over in her mind the events of that day.
“The hydroplane,” she whispered. “Who can be coming up here to hide away on the shore of that narrow lake? And why?
“How simple it is after all, coming up here in a plane without attracting attention! The plane from Houghton comes and goes at all hours. The people at Rock Harbor hear it. If it does not land at their door, they say, ‘It has gone to Tobin’s Harbor or Belle Isle.’ The folks at Tobin’s Harbor and Belle Isle think it has gone to Rock Harbor. The strange plane may come and go up here as its pilot wishes, and no one the wiser.
“After all,” she sighed, “we are not officers of the law. It’s really not our affair. And yet—”
She was thinking of the scream Greta had heard, and of the apparently helpless one carried to a boat and then to land, and after that of the scream they had both heard in the night.
“Life,” she told herself, “all human life is so precious that it is the duty of all to protect those who are in danger.
“Probably nothing very terrible,” she assured herself. “Nothing to be afraid of. We—”
She broke her thoughts square off to lean forward
and listen with all her ears. Had she caught some sound from without, the snapping of a twig perhaps?
“Some prowling wolf or a moose passing.”
Not satisfied with this, she opened the flaps of the tent and peered into the moonlight.
The moon was high. The silence was uncanny. Every object, trees, bushes, rocks stood out like pictures in fairyland. Shadows were deep wells of darkness.
Some ten feet from their tent was a large flat rock, their “table.” This stood full in the moonlight. That they had left nothing on this “table” she knew right well. She had washed it clean with a canvas bucket full of water from a spring. And yet—
She rubbed her eyes to look again. No, she was not mistaken. Two objects rested on that rock, one white as snow, the other dark and gleaming.
“Well,” she sighed, “have to see.”
Creeping from the warm blankets, she stepped on the cold, damp floor of night. “Oo!” she shuddered. Next instant her hands closed on the mysterious objects.
“How—how strange!” She shuddered again, but not from the cold, then beat a hasty retreat.
Inside the tent, she turned the objects over in her hands. One was a large roll of bandages, the other a bottle of liniment.
“Who—” she whispered, “who can that have been?”
The answer came to her instantly. “The one who lowered the rope into the copper mine. And, perhaps, the one who plays the violin so gloriously. And who is he?” Here was a question she could not answer.
“‘Take, eat,’” she whispered the words of a half forgotten poem.
“Take, eat, he said, and be content.
These fishes in your stead were sent
By him who sent the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham!”
At that she rubbed the liniment over her swollen ankle vigorously, bound it tightly, then crept beneath the blankets once more.
Though the bandage relieved her somewhat, she was still conscious of pain. Our waking thoughts as well as our dreams are often inspired by physical sensations. Pain awakens within us a longing for some spot where we have known perfect peace. To Florence, at the moment, this meant the deck of the unfortunate Pilgrim. There, with the waves lapping the old ship’s sides, the gentle breezes whispering and the gulls soaring high, she had found peace.
As she allowed her mind to drift back to those blissful days, she was tempted to wish that she and the slender, dark-eyed Greta at her side had never set foot on Greenstone Ridge.
“And yet—” she whispered. The words of some great prophet came to her. “‘There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may.’”
“It was written in the stars that we should be here,” she told herself. “And, being here, we shall do what we can for those who are nearest us.
“But, God willing, we shall go back. And then?”
She thought of the narrow camping grounds on the shores of Duncan’s Bay. “There is treasure hidden there,” she told herself. “How can it be otherwise? It is the only bit of level land on that side of Blake’s Point. Countless generations of men have camped there. We will go back there and dig deep.
“And when I am weary of digging—” she laughed a low laugh. “I’ll go back and get that monster of a pike. I’ll go all by myself. And will I land him? Just you wait!”
A shadow passed over her brow as she thought of the head hunter. “Terrible man! Where can he be now?”
She thought of the strange black schooner with a deep-sea diver on board. “Some treasure on that old ship. When I’m back I’ll try diving to see what’s there. Might be more important than the wreckers, who stripped the ship, knew.
“All we need,” she whispered dreamily as the drugging odor of balsam and the silence of night crept over her, “all we need is a barrel of gold. One barrel of—”
She did not finish. She had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XXI
A SONG FROM THE TREE TOPS
Greta Clara Bronson was by nature a musician, an artist, a person of temperament. The dawn of another day found her in no mood for seeking adventure. The troubles of others, if indeed there were troubled ones in these hills, seemed far away.
Having made sure that her companion’s sprained ankle was not a matter of serious consequence, she found herself ready for a day of rest and thought; not serious thought, but the dreamy sort that leads one’s mind, like a drifting cobweb, into unknown lands.
All the long forenoon she lay upon a bed of moss in the sun. At times she dreamed of her home and mother. This seemed very far away. Would she return to it all? Surely, “‘When the frost is on the pumpkin,’” she whispered. Looking up at the sun, she smiled.
For an hour she dreamed of the wreck and of the shady shores of Duncan’s Bay. “Dizzy,” she whispered, “I wonder where he is?” Before leaving the wreck, they had set their pet loon free. He seemed quite able to care for himself. “Probably he’s gone ashore and has laughed his head off at some crazy loon that looks just like him,” she chuckled.
“But Jeanne?” Greta asked herself. “Is she truly happy with those queer gypsy people? How strange it seems!”
* * * *
Yes, Jeanne was happy with “those queer people.” Having, as of old, forgotten all thought of the morrow, she had in true gypsy fashion thrown herself with abandon into the joys of each new day.
At Chippewa Harbor there were a few small cabins and many tents. The visitors showered silver down upon her tambourine when her dance with the bear was over. “Frank, joyous, kindly people, these Americans,” she thought. “What a glorious land!”
And yet her keenest joy came when, after climbing a ridge, she came at last upon a lake three miles long, a mile wide, where there was no one. “Dark forests, darker water, wild moose, wild birds and the deep, glorious silence of God,” she whispered to the companion at her side. “How grand to pitch a tent on these shores and live many long days!”
So the Ship of Joy made its way slowly along the shores of Isle Royale, and still the dark-eyed Greta sat far up on that ridge dreaming the hours away.
After a lunch of toast, bacon and black tea, Greta declared her intention of going out to play for the birds.
Tucking her violin under her arm, she wandered away up the ridge. At the summit, somewhat to her surprise, she found a hard-beaten trail. Traveling here with ease, she wandered on and on until with a little start she found herself recognizing a certain jagged rock formation.
“Must have been here before.” She stopped dead in her tracks. “I have! Last night!”
Should she turn back? Where were the green eyes?
“Green eyes do not shine in the day!” She laughed a little. “Ghosts, witches, green eyes, they all vanish at dawn.”
Seating herself on a moss covered rock, she began thrumming the strings of her violin. Then she sent out some little plaintive snatches of song.
She paused to lean far forward, intent, alert, expectant. Yes, there it was. A bird had answered.
After listening with all her ears, she imitated his call. Then she listened again.
“Yes, yes, my little one!” Her heart warmed to the tiny whistler of Greenstone Ridge. “He’s coming closer.”
Once more she repeated his song. This time there were two replies, one near and one far away. Soon it seemed the bushes, the trees, the very air was filled with little gray and brown songsters. Thrilled by this unique experience, she forgot both time and place as she proceeded to charm her tiny auditors.
Place was brought back to her with startling force. Some great creature came thrashing through the brush.
With a low cry, she gripped her precious violin and sprang for the nearest tree.
Just in time she was, for a bull moose charged full upon the spot where she had been. Why he charged will remain a mystery. Perhaps he did not love music. Perhaps he was just mean by nature. Enough that he was here; and here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he meant to stay.
Having
spent a full ten minutes sharpening his jagged antlers on a dead cottonwood tree, he marched up to Greta’s fir tree, leaned his full weight against it, then gave forth a most terrifying roar. Finding the tree quite solid and alive, he dropped with a grunt on the bed of moss at the foot of the tree and pretended at least to fall asleep.
“Our next number,” Greta said quite soberly, “will be a cradle song entitled ‘When father moose goes to sleep.’”
The thing she played, perched there like a nightingale on a limb, was not that at all, but an exquisite fantasy written after some all-but-forgotten folk song of the gypsies.
Caught by the charm of it, she played it over and over.
Then, to her vast astonishment, as the notes faded away and she rested there among the branches, someone took up her song.
“A violin!” she whispered. “The phantom violin! And so close at hand!”
The effect, there in the gathering twilight, was like a touch of magic.
The silence that followed the stranger’s last note was most profound, so perfect that the flutter of a small bird’s wings might be heard ten yards away. Charmed by this little touch of the dramatic in life, Greta forgot that she was perched in a tree, that a monstrous moose lay at the foot of that tree, and that darkness was falling. Lips parted, ears strained, she waited for one more note from that magic violin.
It did not come. Instead she heard a pleasing voice say, “What are you doing up there?”
“Quiet!” she warned. “There is a moose.”
“Oh ho! That’s it!” There came a mellow laugh. “Some bluffing old moose has you treed. Watch!”
Next instant an ear-splitting shout rent the air.
Came a terrific thumping at the foot of her tree, followed by a sound of crashing of bushes that rapidly diminished in the distance.
“He’s gone,” the voice said. “Come down!”
A brief scramble, then she found herself looking into a smiling face. The face was framed by a tangled mass of gray hair; yet the face was young. It was the face of the picture in that little blank book Florence had found in the mine.
“Per—Percy O’Hara!” Her lips could scarcely frame the words.
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